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By its very nature, terracotta makes rooms cosy. The warm, natural colour tones take us back to a long Mediterranean history in which a low-tech, handmade clay body mix makes the products timeless because they have always belonged to our culture. Traces of terracotta date back to Etruscan times, but the material was most widely used during the Roman Empire. This period saw the development and spread of the classic herringbone pattern, while geometric patterns, inlays and decorations started to appear from the Late Roman and Byzantine periods. These traditions have been handed down to the modern day through sizes – from square to rectangular and from small to geometric multiples – and tone-on-tone decors created through different shades of clay.
In the current age of a return to the material, exemplified by Marazzi’s Crogiolo range, which celebrates the authenticity of handmade ceramics, terracotta is once again making a comeback. While traditionally used in more rustic or rural contexts, terracotta is now reclaiming its aesthetic value, proving suitable for contemporary settings. Interpreted through porcelain stoneware, it becomes an industrial material with high technical performance, which is frostproof and highly resistant to mechanical stress, allowing it to be used in unprecedented ways. Terracotta is also becoming contemporary thanks to sizes that are impossible to obtain from the original material, giving the material a new aesthetic. In this sense, Marazzi’s Terratech collection, with its rectangular (30×60 cm and 75×150 cm) and square (60×60 cm and 75×75 cm) sizes, permits creative experimentation between multiple sizes, seven solid colours and three mosaic decors. Terracotta can be interpreted in large technical surfaces, implemented using the following technologies: StepWise for slip-resistance, BodyPlus for through-body consistency and High Performance for high-stress surfaces
Thanks to 3D Ink Premium Technology, which perfectly matches graphics to three-dimensional structures, different in each piece, each tile of in new Slow collection fully renders the matt, sandy and iridescent surfaces typical of clays, for dynamic, vibrant wall and floor coverings. The aesthetics of terracotta take on a more narrative aspect, reflecting man’s imprint and the authenticity of the material, while lending rooms a warm, homely atmosphere, without sacrificing creativity. Slow’s six sizes, ranging from square to rectangular (120×120 cm, 75×150 cm, 60×120 cm, 80×80 cm, 75×75 cm, 60×60 cm), make it possible to handle multiple spaces and installations, focusing on contrasting combinations of different materials – with the coldness of metal, the brutalism of concrete and the naturalness of wood – and on decors from the same collection, such as Rafia, which recalls a smooth-textured carpet, or Tapis with a more structured surface. In rooms with the most diverse styles, tone-on-tone carpet effects can be created or, through the collection’s largest size, a seemingly jointless surface can be created with a cast-in-place concrete look.
The new ArtCraft collection from the Crogiolo range (square 20×20 cm, hexagonal 21×18.2 cm and rectangular 5.3×30 cm) plays with small sizes. The tiles reproduce the variety and shapes of traditional terracotta, while their workmanship reinterprets – in the slightly irregular surface and edges – the work of the craftsman’s hands and tools. Seven colour variants, from Argilla to Coccio and Sabbia, also presented in three-dimensional listel structures, round chip mosaic and four decors – the geometric Bolli and Triangoli and the more decorative Quadri and Segni, which evoke traditional ceramic motifs – allow for a changeable and personal combination of variants and unexpectedly different solutions in terms of style and colour.
The combination of ArtCraft and Slow, which exploits the relationship between the colour variants in the two collections, is also effective. The craftsmanship of terracotta can therefore be expressed, on walls and floors, through an interplay between different sizes and three-dimensional or decorated surfaces. Terracotta therefore becomes a new language with which to design familiar, yet contemporary spaces full of warmth.
